Applying the Golden Rules of data storytelling for enhanced influence

Welcome to issue five of Data Malarkey - the newsletter about using data smarter.

Applying the Golden Rules of data storytelling for enhanced influence

Business books are all very well, but they’re ten-a-penny. Who really has the time to read each new book and apply its principles and frameworks to how they do business? Whenever you open LinkedIn these days, you’ll find yet another one of your connections who’s written – and often published themselves, unvetted and unedited – a new business book. They tout it as if it’s the single solution to all your business challenges.

Now don’t get me wrong. I write this as the author of a trilogy of business books – each one on different aspects of data storytelling, published by Routledge ?– with a clear and vested interest in growing the number of readers and copies sold. I’m most definitely not against the business book. For me, my Using Data Better trilogy represents the best, most rewarding business cards I’ve ever produced. But I’m also a realist. From the conversations that I often have – with podcast hosts, with members of the audience for my keynotes, and with my training delegates – it’s clear that business books are not the only or the most efficient way of sharing hard-won wisdom with the wider world.

That was the motivation which led us to create our online data storytelling training course, Using Data Smarter, where the approaches and templates set out in the three books are brought to life. Three core modules, 20 lessons, three hours of video in 5-10-minute snippets, and ten practical resources to make anyone a better data storyteller. Available anywhere, at any time, on mobile, tablet, or laptop.

And it’s also the motivation which led us to create our very snackable guide, The Six Golden Rules of Data Storytelling.Ten pages, three frameworks, and examples of good, bad, and ugly data storytelling in the public eye. A 20-minute read, tops, and – for someone who’s never even thought about how they might combine narrative and numbers, stories and statistics – this high-level download should whet your appetite and get you started on your data storytelling journey.

When people first hear the phrase “data storytelling”, they’re often concerned that this defining skill of the modern knowledge economy will be deeply technical, demand rigorous mathematical smarts, and so be beyond their grasp. What many – both those more at home with data and those much more comfortable with storytelling – find a great relief is this: data storytelling is fundamentally all about empathy and humanity. By truly knowing and understanding your audience (the fifth Golden Rule), you choose how to use data in your narrative based on the likely data tolerance of that audience.

In just six phrases and a single sentence explanation, here are those Six Golden Rules once more:

1. Keep It Simple – Yet Smart: use a few, straightforward numbers as proof points, not too precise, no fractions or decimals, and in this way pique your audience’s interest.

2. Find and Use Only Relevant Data: ask smarter questions to surface the right data, don’t try to cook the books, and make your point with relevance – not sheer weight of data.

3. Avoid False Positives: be certain you’ve not been seduced by apparent patterns in data – particularly data that seems to reveal trends over time – as correlation is not the same as causation.

4. Beware the Curse of Knowledge: this Curse – “the difficulty in imagining what it’s like not to know something that you do know” – blights those who use data in their storytelling daily, so leave it out!

5. Know Your Audience: put yourself into the mind, the mindset, the shoes of those you seek to influence, turn up the empathy radar, and speak to that audience’s likely data tolerance ONLY.

6. Talk ‘Human’: balance the emotional and the rational, the narrative and the numbers, and speak that rarest of corporate dialects – ‘Human’.

The defining equation of success in business today is ‘Analytics + Storytelling = Influence”. If you regularly apply these Six Golden Rules, you will find yourself more influential.

To get a quick kick-start to upping your data storytelling game – and to see how others do it well (and terribly) – click on the image above (or this link) and download our free Guide. And please, do feel free to share it with everyone in your team or organisation.

If the Guide sets your antennae twitching as I believe it will, you can get hold of Narrative by Numbers – my first book from 2018 in which the Golden Rules are set out – on this link. And if you’re ready for a self-paced, any-device training course, you can access Using Data Smarter over there.

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Spreading the word on data storytelling, past and future

Last week, it was my privilege to give the opening, keynote address at an event hosted by Adobe. “Storytelling in the digital age” focused on how to leverage customer data to tell personalised stories that resonate on a deeper level and leave a lasting impact.

My example of brilliant data storytelling came from easyJet and the company’s 20th birthday direct email campaign to 12.5m customers in 27 markets across Europe in 23 languages. The outcome? 14 times more bookings in the following 28 days compared with other campaigns two years either side of “20 years have flown”. None-too-shabby a bit of data storytelling … about an award-winning data storytelling campaign.

I kicked the event off and we were then treated to two ‘stories from the front line’ – from Bethan Lynch , Head of Customer Experience at B&Q, and Callum Staff , Head of Data Products for M&S – expertly hosted by Georgia Scott , Head of Solutions Marketing at Adobe. Here's a (deliberately) blurred image of my co-presenters on stage, plus my lanyard on my knee, at our hugely successful morning working together at the Holborn Hoxton in London's fashionable Midtown. Thanks to Adobe and the Entourage BD crew – particularly Lauren T. – for organising the event and inviting me to give the keynote.

Next Thursday 19 October, I’m giving a masterclass to the Virtual Advisory Board (VAB) 's VAB Academy titled “Why data storytelling is pivotal to boardroom success”. The Board is a virtual, global platform that connects boards around the world with potential board members, empowering both to navigate their way in the global ecosystems of both boards of directors and advisory boards. It was created by Mark Hamill and David Rodrigo Fernández Esquivel – to whom many thanks for the invitation to speak. Thanks also to Luiz Felipe Gon?alves and Brady Clough for the support, and – of course! – Gladis Araujo for the introduction.

The Virtual Advisory Board is a membership organisation and VAB Academy events are for VAB members only, but – and many thanks to the Academy – non-members can drop in and get a taste of the offer and the community to any event. If you want to come, click here to register.

Two more events, both of them taking place next Friday 20 October, both “last chance to book”.

First, CopyConX, the tenth, annual conference “for everyone who uses words to make a difference / who puts words to work”. This year’s event is being held in the Wolfson Theatre at London’s splendid Royal College of Physicians.

CopyCon features eight speakers talking for half an hour each. No chopping and changing for formats. My talk – which is set to open the conference – is titled “Analytics + Storytelling = Influence”, and it’s great to bring my data storytelling keynote to CopyCon. The last few tickets are available here, and the event takes place next Friday 20 October …

… immediately after which I’ll be hopping on a train and heading South. Early that afternoon, I’ll be on stage again – this time in Asking Smarter Questions mode – interviewing “the forensic scientists’ forensic scientist”, Professor Angela Gallop, at 2023's Brighton Chamber Brighton Summit, whose theme this year is Human.

Angela has a career-long expertise and a reputation for solving some of the most challenging and notorious cold murders cases, from Rachel Nickell to Roberto Calvi, Damilola Taylor to Stephen Lawrence. In this inspiring and deeply human chat, I’ll be asking Angela to explore and explain the meaning of the maxim of the founding father of forensic science, Edmond Locard, who observed: “Every contact leaves a trace”. Again, there are now just a handful of tickets left for the Brighton Summit, so head over for the last few ‘hot cakes’ here.

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The Data Malarkey podcast

Season three of the Data Malarkey podcast opened on 27 September with Emmy Award-winning writer Les Guessing , sharing both the highs (and the lows) of his attempts to use AI to accelerate the creative process, as well as his algorithms for jokes. We followed this this Wednesday, 11 October, with equity and inclusion changemarker, Sabrina Shadie FIEDP, FIoL, FInstCPD . Sabrina’s journey – and that of her multi-award-winning agency, D'Rose Consultancy – is inspiring. And her matter-of-fact, data-driven approach to helping all sorts of organisations counter racism, sexism, and ableism should inspire even those most stuck-in-their-ways and backwards-looking onto a roadmap for change.

On Wednesday 25 October, I’ll be welcoming Angela Gallop – fresh from the conference stage at the Brighton Summit – as my guest on Data Malarkey. Incredible, “more gripping than CSI” tales from the forensic scientists’ forensic scientist, Angela’s description of what she and her teams did to isolate the evidence required to convict Stephen Lawrence’s murderers is a tour de force. An episode not to be missed, and further evidence – if evidence be need be – that we all have so much to learn from radically-different areas about smarter use of data.

If you haven’t done so already, head over to Apple, Spotify, or Google podcasts and join the hundreds of others who’ve already hit the ‘subscribe’ button to make sure you never miss another episode. And if video podcasts are your thing – like more than half of those who discover new content today – you can subscribe via our YouTube channel, @DataMalarkey, where video episodes drop a week after the audio versions.

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Any suggestions for guests – if you think you’d make a good guest or you know or work with someone who’d tell a great story about how they make smarter use of data – drop us an email at [email protected] or complete the simple application form at https://www.usingdatasmarter.com/guest

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Training dates for your diary

Wannabe data storytellers have two opportunities to attend my open access training courses in early November. Both titled “Narrative by Numbers”, I’m running a half-day session via the PUBLIC RELATIONS COMMUNICATIONS ASSOCIATION LIMITED (PRCA) on the morning of Tuesday 7 November (booking here), and a more leisurely, full-day session via the Market Research Society (MRS) the following day, Wednesday 8 November (booking over there).

Both courses have a very few spaces open at time of going to press, and both are open to both members and non-members of either body.

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What do you think?

Do let us know what you think of the Data Malarkey Newsletter at [email protected]